By the side of the Governor and the Intendant at the council sat the bishop, spiritually supreme, and with power by no means confined to spiritual matters. How strong, politically, was the Church in France before the Revolution, the cardinal prime ministers bear witness, and the priest-ridden wives and mistresses of the Bourbon Kings. It was stronger still in Canada. Priests formed no small part of the scanty population of New France; they made a large part of its history. The schools and hospitals were built by the Church, and the Church owned much of the land. Well organized and disciplined, with clear and definite aims, the ministers of the Church made their power felt in council chamber and in palace; too often they ruled the rulers; and the first and greatest bishop of Canada, Bishop Laval, made or unmade the Governors of New France. [Sidenote: _Defects in the political system of New France. Centralization of power._] Such was the political system of Canada, while Canada was a province of France. Power was centralized, and the ordinary safeguards of freedom were wholly wanting. Executive, legislative, and judicial functions were placed in the same hands. There was not a shred of popular representation, there was not even a vestige of municipal rights.[4] Canada was good for priests and, to some extent, for soldiers; there was room in it and a living for an agricultural peasantry, and for the trapper and backwoodsman, who was a law to himself. Where the St. Lawrence flowed by the island of Montreal, or under the rock of Quebec, there were the beginnings of cities with dwellers in them, but there were no citizens in Canada. [Footnote 4: Count Frontenac on first arriving in Canada attempted to give the Canadians some voice in the government by calling together the three estates, and by allowing the citizens of Quebec to elect three aldermen. He incurred the royal displeasure by his proceedings, and his measures came to nothing. See Parkman's _Count Frontenac and New France_ (14th ed.), pp. 16, &c., and see below, p. 107.] {98} [Sidenote: _Friction between the officials._]